Unemployment

Consumer confidence dropped to the seven's month low while the consumer spending has hit ten months high. I was always under impression that consumers supposed to spend less when they are less confident, and they usually spend more when they more confident.

I would say that overall we have good economic reports. Almost all current bad economic data (excluding unemployment) are narrowed to the point that they are actually positive and are better than before, yet the press tells us that investors would be happier if economic reports would be better. So far, we do not see any points to the dramatic bankruptcies of stock market giants which suggest that overall stock market is quite healthy.

Unemployment is an another story. With growing technology it is obvious that on many working places functions and procedures previously performed by humans are now performed by robots and computers. 2008 recession has pushed many companies to lay off employees and many of these companies have found that they could achieve the same productivity with less human resources. Keep in min that company will always prefer to have more robotus and computerized technologies which means less expenses, less trouble with unions, etc. Because of that, we should expect to see unemployment at the same level for a while (on mine opinion). The public companies and stock market will be "ok" with it.

Case-Shriller Index

The Standard & Poor's Case-Shriller U.S. National Home Price Index is updated on the monthly basis on the last Tuesday of each month at 9:00 AM ET and is a composite of single-family home price indices for the nine U.S. Census divisions. The Case-Shriller consists of 20 metropolitan area indices and two composite indices. The index is based on single-family home re-sales ( co-ops and condominiums are exempted as is new construction) with two or more sales transactions and is used to measure changes in existing home prices. The Case-Shriller index is normalized to have a value of 100 in January 2000.